AuntieS retweeted
What I’m about to describe is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of modern caregiving: Why can every woman on earth put on pantyhose with the grace of a Broadway ballerina… but my socks get treated like they’re being installed by a construction crew on lunch break?
Let me confess something: I’ve always had a curious appreciation for watching a woman put on pantyhose.
There’s technique involved! She rolls them up, slips them over her toes, and starts working them up her legs. Everything goes smoothly until the thighs and rump roast request a meeting.
Now we’re negotiating.
There’s a wiggle, a jiggle, and a pause to reconsider the purchase. I’m sitting there like a coach on fourth-and-inches.
“Come on, now! We’ve come too far to punt!”
One final adjustment, everybody takes a deep breath, and victory! Somebody cue the marching band!
These days, ALS has given me a whole new appreciation for that process. I’m studying the technique and thinking:
“WHY CAN’T MY CAREGIVERS PUT MY SOCKS ON LIKE THAT?”
Lord have mercy.
I love my caregivers. Our sock department, however, needs a staff meeting.
They don’t roll anything. They don’t glide anything. They don’t pause for dramatic effect. They grab a sock by the opening and start pulling like they’re cranking a lawn mower that’s been behind the shed since 1987 and just yank.
No finesse. No technique. No anticipation. Just straight-up sock violence.
The other day I had to wear knee‑high dress socks. I’m sitting there watching them struggle, and it took so long I had to double-check to make sure they weren’t compression socks. Because if they were, my already skinny legs would’ve looked like two broomsticks trapped in a sausage casing. I don’t need compression—my legs already look like they’ve been on a hunger strike.
And let me tell you the part that drives me crazy: when they skip the roll‑up method, I have that extra sock hanging off my toes.
My foot stops right here. The sock continues on to Chattanooga.
Nobody has ever said, “Ooooh, look at that extra sock toe fabric… that’s hot.” Nothing neat. Nothing smooth. Nothing remotely dignified. Just toe‑flap misery.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting there wishing—hoping—praying—that one day my caregivers will adopt the pantyhose technique. Roll the sock up. Place it gently on my toes. Glide it up my leg with precision. Give me a little suspense. A little artistry. A little “Will it make it over the calf? Stay tuned!”
But no. Every morning, they’re back at it—yanking, tugging, pulling, and leaving my toes looking like they’re wearing tiny cotton sleeping bags.
And I’m thinking to myself, “Pantyhose would NEVER do me like this.”
All these years, I thought watching women put on pantyhose was a personal interest.
Turns out I’ve been researching improvements for the sock department.
🤖 Made with AI
AuntieS retweeted
The American media never covered what happened beneath the black ice of Hachinohe.
Late March 2011.
Northern Japan was freezing to death.
Millions of survivors in Tohoku had no heat, no electricity, and no gasoline for ambulances.
Giant Japanese fuel tankers loaded with millions of gallons of life-saving oil were waiting offshore.
Why couldn't they dock?
Because the tsunami had turned Hachinohe Port into an underwater minefield.
Massive fishing trawlers, crushed shipping containers, and twisted steel cranes were sunk across the harbor floor.
If a single fuel tanker hit a sunken hull, it would rip open and explode.
The port was dead.
The lifeline to Northern Japan was choked shut.
Enter the salvage ship USNS Safeguard and the divers of US Navy Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit One (MDSU-1).
Do you have any idea what was waiting for them under that water?
Water temperature: 34 degrees Fahrenheit.
Visibility: ZERO. Pitch black.
The harbor was a toxic soup of leaking diesel oil, raw sewage, jagged sheet metal, and drifting fishing nets that could tangle a diver and drown him in seconds.
Civilian salvage companies said it was suicide to dive.
Your Navy divers strapped on heavy lead weights and jumped straight into the black abyss.
Unable to see their own hands in front of their masks, those American boys crawled across the freezing sea floor by touch alone.
Their fingers went numb inside thick rubber gloves as they wrapped heavy steel chains around sunken ships and jagged wreckage in the dark.
Twelve hours a day.
Shivering uncontrollably between dives, drinking hot water just to feel their lips again, and diving right back down.
In days, they hauled 280 cubic yards of lethal steel out of the channel.
They opened the port.
And when the first massive fuel tanker glided safely into Hachinohe to bring heat to a million freezing Japanese families, your divers stood on the icy deck, covered in black grease, cheering like kids.
No cameras were watching at the bottom of that freezing harbor.
They risked drowning in the dark so our children wouldn't freeze in the night.
Happy 250th, America.
We will never forget the men who dived into the dark for us. 🇺🇸⚓🇯🇵
AuntieS retweeted
STOP FORCING WHAT REQUIRES FINESSE
A Devotional by Kerry Goode
I’ve learned something about life: everything doesn’t respond well to being forced.
Sometimes we pull harder because we think harder means better. We keep tugging on situations, wrestling with relationships, pushing opportunities, and trying to make things happen on our timetable.
Then we wonder why we’re exhausted.
Living with ALS has forced me to slow down and recognize something I probably should have learned years ago: the way you handle something matters.
There are situations that don’t need more strength. They need more patience.
Some people don’t need you to push them harder. They need you to handle them with grace.
Some problems don’t need an immediate answer. They need prayer, wisdom, and time.
And some doors don’t need to be kicked open. If God wants you on the other side, trust Him to provide the right way through.
We spend so much energy wrestling with things God never asked us to wrestle.
I’m learning to ask:
“Lord, am I supposed to fight this, fix this, wait on this, or simply trust You with this?”
That question can save you a whole lot of unnecessary pulling, tugging, and frustration.
Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”
Sometimes our greatest problem isn’t the situation. It’s our determination to handle it our way.
Today, stop forcing what requires faith.
Slow down.
Pray.
Pay attention.
Let God show you the right approach.
Because strength is powerful, but strength without wisdom can turn a simple situation into a wrestling match.
And maybe somebody needs this reminder today:
You don’t have to wrestle everything into place.
What God has for you doesn’t always require more force.
Sometimes it requires more faith.
Kerry Goode
🤖 Made with AI
AuntieS retweeted
You know that suffocating air at an airport
when everything goes to hell?
That was Chicago O’Hare.
Flight 412, delayed over three hours.
Everyone at the gate was ready to snap.
Guys in expensive suits screaming
in the face of a terrified gate agent.
Exhausted toddlers face down
on the carpet, sobbing.
Nobody looking anyone in the eye.
Just two thousand strangers
trapped in pure, ugly misery.
Then the intercom crackles to life.
"Ladies and gentlemen...
please welcome home the veterans
of today's Honor Flight."
And the entire terminal just froze.
Down the center of the concourse
came ten wheelchairs.
Ten old men in faded navy caps.
Eighty years ago, they were boys
walking straight into gunfire
so the world would not burn.
Right up front was a ninety eight year old man.
His hands were shaking hard,
clutching a tiny framed photo on his lap.
A black and white picture of a girl
with curled hair from 1944.
Smiling up at him.
Dead silence fell over that gate.
Then, a construction worker sitting on a bag,
dusty boots, neon orange vest,
he drops his phone.
He stands up.
And he starts clapping. Hard.
Next to him, a businessman slams his laptop shut
and stands.
Then five people behind them.
Then fifty.
Then the entire concourse.
In ten seconds flat,
two thousand miserable, furious strangers
lined both sides of that hallway
like a wall of living stone.
Teenagers ripped out their earbuds.
Dads hoisted their little boys
onto their shoulders.
Big, tough men pulled off their hats,
pressed them against their chests,
and did not even bother wiping away
the tears running down their faces.
The roar that bounced off the glass ceiling
was not just applause.
It was thunder.
It hit you right in the ribs.
And then, God, this is the part that wrecks you.
The ninety eight year old man
slides that photograph into his coat pocket.
And he tries to stand.
He wants to return the salute.
His hands grip the armrests,
his knuckles turning white,
but his knees are shaking so violently
they just buckle under him.
He cannot make it up alone.
Before his feet can slip,
a young Marine in uniform bolts forward.
At the exact same second,
another traveler lunges in from the crowd.
They do not say a word.
They just lock their hands under his elbows
and heave him straight up onto his feet.
Solid as an oak tree.
And that old warrior raises a trembling hand to his brow,
locking in the sharpest, proudest salute
you have ever seen.
Standing tall on the strength of two strangers,
while thousands of people cheered
until their voices gave out.
You want to know what the soul of a people looks like?
Do not watch the news.
Just watch how a room full of angry strangers
treats an old soldier
whose sword was laid down eighty years ago.
AuntieS retweeted
🚨🚨🚨 BOMBSHELL: THE EMAIL THEY HID FROM AMERICA 🚨🚨🚨
A previously CLASSIFIED email from top U.S. diplomat George Kent to Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch has just been released — and it changes EVERYTHING about the 2019 impeachment.
Kent warned that Joe Biden needed to be quietly told that his son Hunter’s board seat at Burisma was ACTIVELY UNDERMINING America’s anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine. Ukrainians were hearing one message from the U.S. government… and watching the Biden family do the exact opposite with a known corrupt company.
This document directly contradicts what the impeachment team told the American people.
They said Hunter’s role had zero impact on U.S. policy.
The internal records say otherwise.
THIS IS TREASON AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL.
The people who hid this, the officials who testified under oath, and everyone who pushed the narrative while knowing the truth — they sold out America’s interests for political protection.
No more excuses. No more “no impact.” The paper trail is now public.
🔥 FULL DETAILS: John Solomon is breaking it down. Share this before they try to bury it again.
@jsolomonReports #BidenUkraine #Declassified #WarRoom #Treason
AuntieS retweeted
True story:
As a boy growing up in California, Michael Monsoor suffered from asthma so severe that few believed he could ever endure the physical demands of the military. Refusing to accept weakness, he strengthened his lungs by racing his siblings endlessly in the family swimming pool. Through sheer grit, he earned the coveted Trident of a United States Navy SEAL.
Michael was a quiet warrior of unshakable faith. Before every combat mission in Ramadi, Iraq, he prayed and tucked a small image of his namesake, Saint Michael the Archangel, inside his combat helmet. In the 130-degree desert heat, he carried over 100 pounds of communications gear and a heavy machine gun without a single complaint, always walking directly behind the point man to shield his platoon from frontal ambushes.
In May 2006, when a teammate was shot down in an open street under a hailstorm of insurgent gunfire, Michael sprinted straight into the kill zone. With bullets kicking up concrete around his boots, he fired back with one hand and dragged his wounded brother to safety with the other, earning the Silver Star.
Four months later, on September 29, 2006, the exact Feast Day of Saint Michael the Archangel, Michael was positioned on an exposed Ramadi rooftop guarding two fellow SEAL snipers. Because he was stationed right beside the doorway, he was the only man on that roof with an instant route to safety.
Suddenly, an insurgent below hurled a fragmentation grenade onto the roof. It struck Michael in the chest and clattered onto the deck between the men.
Michael had a split second to decide. A single step backward through the doorway would have saved his life. Instead, he shouted a warning to his brothers and threw his own body directly onto the live grenade, absorbing the full fury of the blast with his chest. He died thirty minutes later, having saved the lives of the teammates beside him. He was just twenty-five years old, and less than a week away from coming home.
What happened at his funeral at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery remains one of the most moving moments in American military history.
As pallbearers carried Michael’s simple wooden casket toward the gravesite, nearly every Navy SEAL on the West Coast stood waiting in two long columns. As the coffin passed between them, each warrior stepped forward, ripped the golden SEAL Trident pin from his own dress uniform, and drove it deep into the oak lid of the casket with the palm of his hand.
For nearly thirty minutes, the only sound echoing across the cemetery was the rhythmic, thunderous slap of hands against wood. By the time Michael reached his final resting place, a plain wooden box had been transformed into a gleaming, gold-plated monument of brotherhood.
John 15:13 tells us: "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends."
Modern culture tries to tear down our history and mock the virtues of duty, faith, and manhood. Yet America endures because of men like Petty Officer Second Class Michael Monsoor, who loved his God, his country, and his brothers more than his own life.
(PHOTO: Petty Officer Second Class (SEAL) Michael A. Monsoor poses for a photo in Hawthorne Nev. He was posthumously awarded the MOH after he leap on a live grenade saving the lives of two fellow SEALs)
AuntieS retweeted
** stopped to a kid that competed the 50 yard challenge while in VA**
Family, please help me congratulate Gage of Norfolk VA , on completing our 50 Yard Challenge! Gage mowed 50 free lawns for the elderly, people with disabilities, single parents, and veterans in his community. What an incredible accomplishment and a great example of giving back!
AuntieS retweeted
Along a muddy logging road in the Appalachian mountains, a red maple shed its final crimson canopy over a wooden paddock.
Standing by the rail was a twenty-eight-year-old draft horse named Blaze. His chestnut coat was dull with gray dust, his swayback dipped deep, and his hooves were cracked from decades of hauling timber.
A young horse trainer in clean leather chaps shook his head.
"He is twenty-eight, Nobu," the trainer said. "Can't carry a saddle. Can't pull a sled. Costs four hundred dollars a month just to keep his joints from locking up. He's just an expensive pasture ornament now."
The horse stood with his head hanging low, staring at the cold dirt.
In my land, a squire looks at an old steed and calculates how many sacks of rice it can carry to the market.
A general kneels in the mud and looks at the scars left by the leather harness.
I ducked under the wooden rail. I walked straight up to Blaze's chest and placed both palms flat against his scarred shoulders.
The horse did not step back. He let out a long breath of steam that warmed the front of my green vest.
"Master Trainer," I said without turning my head. "You calculate his value by what he can haul tomorrow."
"What else is a draft horse for?" the young man asked.
"This steed pulled ten thousand tons of timber out of the freezing mud so your grandfather could build the barn you sleep in," I told him. "He does not owe this mountain another ounce of sweat."
I rested my forehead against Blaze's broad velvet cheek.
"A young colt works to earn his place in the stable," I said. "A retired veteran stands in the pasture to remind the valley of what endurance looks like."
Blaze's ears pricked forward. He lifted his heavy head three inches off the mud and let out a deep, chest-shaking whinny that rolled across the hollow.
The young trainer stood quietly for ten seconds. He put his hands into his pockets, walked to the shed, and came back with a double ration of sweet oats and two red apples.
He sliced the apples with his pocketknife and fed them by hand.
You do not judge a mountain by how much timber you can cut from it. You bow to it because it never fell down.
AuntieS retweeted
THEY PUT THEIR PANTS ON JUST LIKE WE DO… WELL, NOT ME!
Growing up, whenever somebody tried to intimidate us, we had one saying:
“They put their pants on the same way we do!”
That was supposed to make you fearless.
Especially in football.
Our little 37-man squad would trot onto the field, and then the other team would come out.
And keep coming.
And coming.
And coming.
We’d start counting helmets.
“Coach… they got 73.”
“Coach… 82.”
“Coach… I think another bus just pulled up!”
Some of those teams had enough players to invade a small country.
But Coach Jack Steele would stand there chewing gum like it owed him money and say,
“Fellas, they can only put eleven on the field at one time.”
Then he’d puff out his chest.
“And I’ll bet on our eleven every time!”
Finally, he’d hit us with the line:
“Besides, they put their pants on the same way we do!”
MAN, PLEASE!
Since being diagnosed with ALS, I have discovered that statement is medically, physically, and spiritually inaccurate.
There are MULTIPLE ways to put pants on when you’re paralyzed.
There’s the Bed Method.
I lie there while my caregivers pull my pants up.
Simple. Efficient. Dignified.
Well… as dignified as a grown man can look while several adults wrestle his britches over his backside like they’re putting a fitted sheet on a king-size mattress.
Then there’s the Wheelchair Slalom.
You sit in your chair leaning side to side while somebody yanks your pants upward.
It looks like Olympic skiing, except nobody gets a medal and everybody needs a nap afterward.
But my favorite is the LEAN-OVER-AND-PRAY METHOD.
They roll my wheelchair beside the bed, lean me forward, stretch my arms across the mattress, rest my forehead down, and pull my pants up from behind.
Works great.
Until recently.
My caregivers leaned me over with a little too much enthusiasm and planted my entire face straight into the comforter.
Now I’m completely paralyzed, face buried in Egyptian cotton, unable to move, while behind me they’re happily tugging on my pants.
They’re fighting with Levi’s.
I’m negotiating with Jesus.
I’m thinking, “Lord, please don’t let my obituary say: **Kerry Goode—taken out by denim.**”
And for the first time in my life, I was thankful for my tracheostomy!
My face was buried in the mattress, but my trach was sticking out like a little emergency snorkel.
So next time somebody tells me,
“I put my pants on just like you do,”
I’ll smile.
Unless your morning routine includes wheelchair gymnastics, a face-plant into a duvet, three caregivers wrestling your Levi’s, and a tactical throat-snorkel…
WE ARE NOT THE SAME!
Coach Steele, I still love you.
But that pants speech definitely needs an ALS disclaimer.
🤖 Made with AI
AuntieS retweeted
Dear Secretary Bessent @SecScottBessent,
My name is Everett Stern. In 2010 I was a compliance officer at @HSBC. From a back office in New Castle, Delaware, I watched billions of dollars move to drug cartels, sanctioned regimes, and terrorist organizations. The enemies of the United States. I documented it, I escalated it, and when the bank would not act, I took it to the @FBI, the @CIA, and eventually the @SECGov.
The result was a $1.92 billion settlement. At the time, it was one of the largest in American history. It was also about five weeks of the bank’s profit. Not one banker was charged. Not one went to prison.
I paid a different price. I lost my career, my savings, and my place in the industry I had trained for. I was blacklisted. Every door in American finance closed at once. I slept on a camping cot in a 300 square foot apartment because I could not afford a bed, and I waited tables at @PFChangs to eat. I tell you this not for sympathy, but so you understand that I know exactly what it costs to do the right thing in American finance, and exactly how little the system does in return.
I made that sacrifice because I believed it would change something.
Yesterday, your department fined @BankofAmerica $1.2 billion for failing to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions, some of it tied by your own findings to Chinese laundering networks, narcotics, and the southwest border, alongside 475 apparent sanctions violations touching Russia, Iran, and global terrorism. The bank admitted it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act.
Fourteen years after HSBC. A bank with “America” in its name. And once again, not one individual charged.
Secretary Bessent, I want to say plainly what I believe you already know. The fines are not working.
A fine is paid by shareholders, absorbed by the balance sheet, and forgotten by the next earnings call. Bank of America reported earnings this morning. Nobody who set the alert thresholds, nobody who decided the 2024 cease and desist could wait, nobody who chose the backlog over the law will lose a single thing they value. Their lives are untouched. That is the entire reason the behavior repeats.
This is money laundering. This is blood money. Money that reaches a cartel buys fentanyl that kills Americans. Money that reaches a terrorist organization buys the next attack. This country has fought a war on drugs and a war on terror for decades, at enormous cost in lives and treasure, and all the while we have allowed the financing to flow through institutions we charter and regulate. Cut off the money and we win. We have never seriously tried.
There is also a question of equal justice that I cannot let go.
Before I walked into the FBI building to report HSBC, I stopped in front of the Great Seal on the wall and read the words engraved beneath it: “Justice is the defense of our liberty.” I believed that. I still want to. But every day in this country, people go to prison for crimes that are nothing next to moving money for the people who want Americans dead. A suit, a title, and a corporate badge should not be a shield from the consequences that apply to everyone else. If a street dealer goes to prison for what he sells, the banker who moved the cartel’s money should be standing next to him.
I also want to raise something that is rarely said in these conversations. Why has no one inside Bank of America come forward the way I did? The answer is that everyone in American banking knows what happened to me, and to the whistleblowers who came after. The last person who spoke up is the only policy anyone believes. That is a culture problem, and it starts with leadership, in the banks and in the agencies that regulate them.
This is not a political issue. It has spanned administrations of both parties. It is a national security issue, and I am asking you to treat it as one.
Three things would change the math overnight.
Refer individuals for criminal prosecution. Not the analyst in the queue. The executives who set the thresholds and chose the risk. One banker in handcuffs would do more than every fine in Treasury’s history combined.
End “too big to jail.” An institution cannot be too big to fail and too big to jail at the same time. If it is the first, it must be held to a higher standard, not a lower one.
And if Bank of America will not act as America’s bank, review its charter. A national charter is a privilege granted on behalf of the American people. It should be conditioned on not moving money for the people trying to kill them.
Secretary Bessent, you said yesterday that these actions send a clear message that even the biggest institutions are not above the law. With respect, the institution was never the problem. The people inside it are above the law, and they know it. Until that changes, I will keep writing letters like this one, and the next bank will keep paying the next fine.
I gave up everything I had to stop this. I am asking you to use the power you have to finish it.
Respectfully,
Everett A. Stern
HSBC Whistleblower
Founder and Intelligence Director, Tactical Rabbit
AuntieS retweeted
In a roadside bakery in Vermont, an elderly woman named Martha hauled a heavy iron tray of steaming pies from a brick hearth at dawn.
Outside, the hills were ablaze with red and yellow maple leaves. Inside, a tourist in brand-new hiking boots stared at Martha's silver braid and shook his head.
"Ma'am, you are seventy-five," the man said. "Why are you still lifting fifty-pound flour sacks? You should be in Florida sitting on a deck chair."
Martha slammed a wooden rolling pin onto a slab of buttered dough. The heavy counter groaned like an old bridge.
"Florida is where people go to wait for the curtains to close," she snapped, wiping white powder from her forehead. "I still have three bushels of Honeycrisp to core."
In my land, young swordsmen polish their blades until they reflect the moon. But the greatest generals carry steel notched by sixty years of battle.
I stepped to the counter, placed both hands flat, and bowed until my nose grazed the flour.
The tourist jumped back two steps.
"Madam General," I said. "An apprentice looks for a soft feather bed. A master sharpens her edge until the sun drops beneath the earth."
I pointed to three thick burn marks across her forearms, bright pink against her freckled skin.
"Those are not clumsy scars," I said. "Those are the medals of someone who has negotiated with three hundred degrees of fire six thousand times and never surrendered the hearth."
Martha froze. Flour dust drifted like gold in the morning sunlight.
Her face split into a wide grin that wiped thirty years off her cheeks in one breath.
"HEAR THAT, BOB?" she hollered into the pantry. "THE SAMURAI SAYS I AM NOT A PENSIONER, I AM A SIEGE WEAPON."
She cut a third of the hottest pie and pushed it across the counter on wax paper.
The cinnamon hit my chest like an arrow. I burned my tongue completely.
People who surrender run from the heat. The warriors build the fire.
AuntieS retweeted
- Halloween nació en la Edad Media
- Era una tradición católica
- Se celebraba entre la noche del 1° de Noviembre (Día de Todos los Santos) y el 2° de Noviembre (Día de los Fieles Difuntos)
- Esa noche los pobres (especialmente los niños) salían a pedir alimentos puerta por puerta, y a cambio se ofrecían a rezar por el alma de los seres queridos difuntos de las familias que los ayudaran <- Así nació la tradición de ir puerta a puerta
- Las familias católicas se anticipaban a este día y preparaban alimentos de antemano para darle a quienes fueran a pedirles
- Las familias más acaudaladas preparaban pastelitos dulces (que eran un lujo en esa época) y estos con el tiempo fueron tomando el nombre de "pasteles de alma" <- Así nació la tradición de regalar "dulces"
- Este festejo iba acompañado del encendido de velas para conmemorar a los fallecidos, el tallado de faroles improvisados en verduras disecadas, y el ocasional sonar de las campañas de la iglesia <- Así nació la tradición de las velas y las calabazas talladas
- Esta tradición se mantuvo viva en Europa hasta el siglo XVI, cuando comenzó a desaparecer en algunos lugares por el avance de la Iglesia Protestante, quienes rechazaban la idea de rezar por el alma de los muertos (por no creer en el purgatorio) y quienes prohibieron tocar las campanas de la iglesia por ese motivo
- Más tarde, cerca del año 1900, comenzó a perder su significado original en casi todo el mundo, celebrándose el 31 de Octubre y orientándose cada vez más hacia la brujería, la cultura de la muerte y las prácticas vandálicas como el "dulce o truco"
- Finalmente, entre 1900 y 1980, los medios de comunicación fijaron la estética de terror y el sentido que actualmente tiene esta fecha, haciendo que pierda de manera radical el significado que esta tiene en el inconsciente colectivo
---
Este 1° de Noviembre invito a todos a rezar por el alma de las personas fallecidas y practicar la caridad con aquellos que menos tienen
Quizás algún día podamos recuperar el hermoso significado original que tenía esta fecha y que nunca debió haber perdido
AuntieS retweeted
I MAY HAVE LOST MY VOICE, BUT I HAVEN’T LOST MY MIND!
ALS may have changed how I communicate—but it didn’t change who’s in charge.
Living with ALS has taught me something I never expected:
Apparently, when your legs stop working and your voice gets weak, some folks assume your brain packed its bags and left too!
When Tanja and I go to a restaurant, somebody will walk right past me, look at her and ask, “What would he like?”
Excuse me?
“He” is sitting right here!
At doctor appointments, people sometimes start explaining my body, my treatment, and my decisions to Tanja while I’m sitting three feet away thinking, Did I become invisible in the parking lot?
Tanja will politely tell them, “Kerry can answer for himself.”
Then comes the awkward waiting while I type my response with my eye-gaze computer.
And sometimes I can almost feel them thinking, Lord, this is taking forever.
Listen—I KNOW!
It ain’t exactly a cakewalk over here either!
You’re waiting thirty seconds.
I’m typing a whole sentence WITH MY EYEBALLS!
Give me a minute!
One of the hardest parts of ALS is being physically dependent while remaining completely mentally capable. Sometimes family members, caregivers, medical professionals, or others make decisions about what I need, where I’m going, what I want, or what I should do without asking me first.
That can be frustrating.
I appreciate help.
I need help.
But needing assistance is not the same as surrendering authority over my life.
Sometimes I have to remind even the people who love me:
“Before y’all hold this board meeting about Kerry Goode… somebody might want to consult **Kerry Goode!**”
I try to handle those moments with patience, humor, grace—and just enough Southern attitude to keep everybody properly trained.
Because ALS may have changed how I speak, but it has not changed my ability to think, choose, dream, lead, love, laugh, or make decisions.
My communication device is not my voice.
It is simply the microphone my mind uses now.
So when you meet someone living with ALS—or any disability—talk to them, not around them.
Give them time to answer.
Ask before deciding.
Respect their limitations without assuming limitations they don't have.
And remember:
Just because I can't get up and walk out of the meeting doesn't mean you get to run the meeting!
My legs may have retired.
My natural voice may have clocked out.
But my mind?
Management is still on duty.
I'm still the chairman of this operation.
And as long as there is breath in my body and thought in my mind, I still have a say in my own life.
Respect the disability.
Respect the process.
But never underestimate the person.
— Kerry Goode
🤖 Made with AI
AuntieS retweeted
On a Saturday morning at an animal shelter in Nashville, twenty families crowded the front kennels, waving squeaky toys at eight-week-old labradoodle pups.
In the far corner, behind a rusty wire partition in Kennel 14, an eleven-year-old hound mix named Rufus lay with his paws crossed.
His left ear was split, his chest was gray, and one eye was half-closed from an old fence fight. He did not jump. He did not whimper. He merely observed.
Down the concrete hall came an eighty-one-year-old woman named Clara, pushing a four-wheeled steel walker with two yellow tennis balls on the rear legs.
A young volunteer jogged over with a clipboard. "Ma'am! Up front we have two small spaniels, very quiet, very low maintenance!"
Clara did not glance at the clipboard. She stopped directly in front of Kennel 14.
Rufus stood up slowly, working the stiffness out of his hips one joint at a time. He walked to the wire and pushed his broad snout through the steel square.
"You have seen some winters, haven't you, soldier?" Clara whispered.
"Ma'am, he is eleven," the volunteer said gently. "At most he has a year or two. The sorrow when they go..."
In my land, you do not choose a comrade based on how many years they will follow you down the road. You choose them by the clarity with which they meet your gaze.
I stepped behind Clara's steel walker and bowed to both of them.
"Madam Commander," I said. "The novices in the lobby are looking for a diversion to amuse them. You are here to negotiate an alliance between two veteran generals."
Clara glanced over her shoulder. Her wrinkled jaw hardened into iron.
"An alliance?"
"Both of you move with deliberation because you carry the scars of every winter you outlasted," I said. "Together, your fortress has no exposed flank."
Clara did not hesitate for a second. She pressed her ink pen onto the contract.
"Unlatch the cage," she told the volunteer. "My chief of staff is coming home."
Rufus walked out and matched his slow, heavy stride precisely to the hum of her tennis-ball walker.
I escorted them to her sedan. It took eight minutes to cross the asphalt.
It was the most triumphant advance I have ever marched in.
AuntieS retweeted
For nearly ten years, he walked into the same pharmacy every month. He took out a folded $100 bill, placed it on the counter, and walked away. Nobody was supposed to know why.
His name was Hody Childress. He lived in the small town of Geraldine, Alabama, with a population of fewer than a thousand people. Around 2012, Hody walked into the local pharmacy, Geraldine Drugs, and asked its owner and pharmacist, Brooke Walker, a simple question: “Do people ever come here to pick up their medications but leave without them because they can't afford to pay?” She answered, “Yes.”
Hody then handed her $100 and asked her to use the money for people who couldn't afford their prescription medications. But he had two conditions: he didn't want to know whom he helped, and the people receiving the assistance were never supposed to know his name. If anyone asked where the money came from, Brooke was instructed to say only: “It's a blessing from God.”
The following month, Hody returned and brought another $100. Then he came back again. And again. Month after month, year after year, for nearly a decade.
He wasn't a millionaire. Hody was a farmer, a U.S. Air Force veteran, and a retiree. He lived primarily on his savings and Social Security benefits. Yet every month, he found that same $100 for someone who might need it more than he did.
The pharmacy used this small, secret fund to help people without insurance or those whose medications their insurance companies refused to cover. According to the pharmacist, the money was often enough to help approximately two people each month. Over the years, hundreds of people benefited.
Some received the essential medications they needed. Others had prescriptions paid for when their insurance wouldn't cover them. For one family, the assistance made it possible to purchase an expensive EpiPen for their child. And almost nobody knew whom to thank.
In late 2022, Hody's health deteriorated significantly. Because of a chronic lung condition, he could no longer make his regular visits to the pharmacy. That was when he finally had to reveal his secret to at least one person: his daughter, Tania. He told her about the $100 and asked her to continue delivering the money on his behalf.
On January 1, 2023, Hody Childress passed away. He was 80 years old. It was only at his funeral that his daughter told people what her father had been doing all those years. And the little town finally discovered who had been behind those mysterious acts of generosity.
People who had once received their medications despite not having enough money learned the name of their anonymous benefactor for the first time.
Then something happened that Hody would never live to see. Other people began coming into the pharmacy. Some brought $20, others brought $50, and some brought their own $100. Among them were neighbors, relatives, and even people whom Hody himself had once helped.
The pharmacy established the Hody Childress Fund so that his small tradition could continue paying for medications for people who couldn't afford them.
For nearly ten years, Hody did everything he could to make sure nobody knew his name. And after his death, that name became the name of a fund.
All he had done was leave a folded $100 bill on a pharmacy counter every month. But it turned out that he had left behind something far greater.
Sometimes kindness needs no cameras, no applause, and not even a thank-you. Sometimes it simply waits quietly behind a pharmacy counter, at the exact moment someone needs it most. ❤️
AuntieS retweeted
GRACE FOR THE NEXT STEP
A Devotional by Kerry Goode
“…forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before…” — Philippians 3:13 (KJV).
I know how easy it is to wake up in a new day and still carry yesterday’s hurt. My mind can revisit what I lost, what I wish had happened, and what I cannot change.
But I am learning to bring those thoughts to God before I let them decide how I will live today.
I can remember yesterday without surrendering today.
Moving forward takes grace. Some days, my next step is simply asking for help. Other days, it is choosing to forgive, trying again, or allowing myself a moment of joy while my heart is still healing.
I don’t have to pretend I’m okay to come to God. I can bring Him the tears, the questions, and the disappointment. His presence gives me courage to keep trusting Him through them.
Maybe you have been measuring your future by the worst thing that happened to you. Maybe you are afraid to hope because hope has hurt before.
I want to encourage you: bring your hurt to God and take today one faithful step at a time.
Take the lesson you need. Give yourself time to grieve. Receive the help that is offered. Let one small act of faith be enough for this moment.
Even when my body is still, my faith can keep reaching forward. I can still love, encourage, pray, and trust Christ with whatever comes next.
My past deserves honesty. My present deserves attention. My future belongs to God.
Prayer: Lord, help me release what I cannot change, honor what I will always love, and follow You with the strength I have today. Give me peace for this moment and courage for what comes next. Amen.
🤖 Made with AI
AuntieS retweeted
🚨12-YEAR-OLD HERO: A brave Virginia boy risks his own life to pull his two baby brothers and grandmother from a burning house!
When a sudden fire broke out in the basement of a Petersburg, Virginia home, thick black smoke began pouring up the stairwell toward the bedrooms where two toddlers—ages 1 and 2—were sleeping inside.
Upstairs, 12-year-old Ramir Parker heard a strange crackling noise and smelled smoke filling the hallway.
Recognizing the immediate danger, Ramir didn't hesitate or panic—he yelled out for his grandmother and ran directly toward the thick smoke and rising flames downstairs to reach his baby brothers.
Ramir scooped up both toddlers in his arms, carried them safely out the front door onto the lawn, and immediately made sure his grandmother followed them to safety.
By the time Petersburg firefighters rushed onto the scene, the home was heavily damaged, but the entire family was standing unharmed on the sidewalk.
Fire officials confirmed that Ramir’s extraordinary bravery and split-second decisions saved his family's lives, prompting the city of Petersburg to formally honor the young man as a local hero!🙌🏾🔥
AuntieS retweeted
Under the blinding halogen stadium towers of Friday night football in Texas, three thousand people scream for high school teenagers.
Nobody watches the concession stand behind the bleachers.
I walked behind the home grandstand where four large white canopy tents smelled purely of mustard, steaming hot dog buns, and roasted peanuts.
Inside the tents, twelve parents wearing matching purple shirts that read Pride of the Plains Band Boosters were moving with the precision of an imperial ordnance battalion.
They were not cheering. They had not seen a single down of football.
A mother named Nancy, wearing purple glitter on her cheeks, had an aluminum foil roll mounted on a wooden spindle.
Her left hand seized a steamed bun from an insulated cooler. Her right hand gripped a set of steel tongs, plucked an all-beef frank from a vat of simmering broth, and placed it inside the bun.
Rip. Fold. Tuck.
The aluminum foil wrapped the hot dog in three swift geometric folds. Nancy did not check the corners. The foil sealed with an airtight crease.
The finished missile was slid down an inclined steel chute into a thermal warming pan. Time elapsed: 1.8 seconds.
Beside Nancy, two fathers were pouring forty gallons of nacho cheese from five-pound steel cans into electric warming wells.
I approached the counter with a five-dollar bill.
Nancy looked up, her forehead shiny with steam.
Hot dog, pretzel, or nachos, hon? Nancy asked.
I pointed to the aluminum pyramid of hot dogs.
Nancy, I whispered, which army general trained this logistics division? You have wrapped two hundred rations while the brass band played one march.
Nancy laughed without interrupting the rhythm of her tongs.
My daughter plays the French horn, sugar, Nancy said. The instruments cost five thousand dollars each and the bus to San Antonio costs twelve thousand. If we don't wrap six hundred dogs before the third quarter, the brass section doesn't travel.
She slapped a wrapped hot dog onto my paper tray alongside two mustard packets.
That will be three dollars, hon. Put the two in the band bucket if your ears liked the halftime show.
I placed the entire five-dollar bill in the brass bucket.
The French horn player has an army behind her that could conquer the Peloponnese. I ate my hot dog in the stands with tears in my eyes.
AuntieS retweeted
At a bar in Nashville, on a Thursday, a man with a microphone found me in the crowd.
"You! Big guy! You sing?"
In my country, refusing a song after the third drink is a crime against the evening. A samurai does not decline the microphone. This is a beautiful rule, and I hated it at that moment with my whole heart, because the truth is I sing the way a fence post dances.
"I accept," I said, and my hands began to sweat immediately.
The crowd wanted Free Bird. The crowd always wants Free Bird.
I did not give them Free Bird. I do not know Free Bird. I gave them the only thing I have, which is an old Japanese song my grandmother sang, a slow one, about a man leaving his hometown on a train, watching the mountains of his childhood disappear, knowing he will never be that man again.
I sang it in Japanese, in a bar in Nashville, to a hundred drunk strangers who did not understand a single word. The microphone smelled of beer. There was a disco ball, turning slowly, for no reason, and I remember thinking: at least the disco ball and I are both ridiculous here.
By the second verse, the bar was silent.
By the third, or the fourth, the song has many verses and fear had damaged my counting, a woman in the front was crying. A man in a trucker hat put down his beer and held his hat over his heart, which is the highest honor this nation can give a song it cannot understand.
When I finished there was a silence like fresh snow. Then the place came apart. Boots on tables. A bachelorette party chanting U-S-A for a song about a Japanese train. The bartender poured me something brown and refused my money. I never learned what it was. It was terrible. I finished it.
The man with the microphone grabbed my shoulder. "Buddy. I don't know what that was. But I felt ALL of it."
That is the thing about this country. You do not have to be understood. You have to be felt.
I go back on Thursdays now. Last week, the woman from the front row requested the train song. She does not know what it is called. She hummed three notes.
I knew.